In pictures: the Puma Solar-Powered Phone

Harnessing the power of the sun

We're not sure what Puma is up to - one day it's making tracksuits, the next it's releasing a phone for the teenage market and teaming up with Sagem to do so.

Is it a phone? Is it a fitness device? Is it a solar powered glimpse of the future? Either way it's big, it's red and it's Puma-branded to the hilt - and we can't help but feel pleasantly intrigued about what this might offer.

The phone itself is a nicely designed piece of kit - well, it looks like it, but we were forced to look at it from behind a glass prison.

One of its main characteristics is that it's powered by the sun - we're not sure that this could be done exclusively to keep it topped up in good ol' Blighty.

It's got the usual phone gubbins as you'd expect - camera, paw print, couple of pictures of the Puma logo stuck on here there and everywhere.

The form factor is pretty neat in our opinion, and it also comes with fitness monitoring software too, so you can at least shed some pounds while being all brand conscious.

Puma must have been worried that people wouldn't know Puma was behind this phone, so they put some more stuff about Pumas on it to clairify:

It does seem like a phone taken in a fairly different direction to most teenager-friendly phones, and we're at least curious to see what the uptake of this is like.

The Puma Phone has a UK release date of April, with pricing and network availability to be announced.